


The Distance Between Us

by Kate_Monster



Category: The OA (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2017-03-30
Packaged: 2018-10-12 19:07:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10497606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate_Monster/pseuds/Kate_Monster
Summary: Late one night, Prairie and Homer confess their truths to each other.





	

He’s almost always there with me, and I feel hollow when he’s not.

Sometimes, even though he’s physically present, I see him retreat and vanish deep into his inner world. He becomes a caged animal, seething with unresolved anger about his circumstances. I feel lonely during those times.

Still, most of the time, we’re together in our solitude. I know his moods, and he knows mine. I know I calm him and ground him and make him smile, while he keeps me moving and talking and exercising. We rely on our companionship.

Some nights, we pull our blankets to the floor. We slide under our beds to whisper, side by side, hidden away where no one can watch us in our own little nest. I feel almost contented when I fall asleep there on the hard rock floor, as if I’m safe from the dangers around us, even though I know the bed frame won’t protect me.

I still like to pretend that Homer can.

He tells me quietly that he felt alone before I came. Even though Scott and August and Rachel were there before me, they didn’t trust each other. Scott has always been angry, and Rachel is shy, and August – well, no one really talks about her much, but Homer still was alone for that first year. I can’t imagine what that must have been like, for so long, to feel like your life had been ripped away from you and you had nothing and no one left. He slept a lot that first year. He still does, but he seems happier when he wakes up.

I still see the loneliness in him sometimes, the residual anger left over from that first year of adjusting to this. As if one could ever fully adjust to this, to being someone’s caged pet.

Except that pets are better cared for. Pets sometimes get a treat. Pets are reassured and played with.

We talk for hours. We talk so long we run out of things to talk about and make up things for each other.

We talk softly so that we can at least pretend like we have privacy, and Rachel and Scott ignore us and let us have our fantasy. He describes movies to me and tries to explain what they looked like. He has a way with words that charms me, the way he’ll stop and search for the right one, and smile a little, and then it comes to mind. I tell him about books I’ve read, I draw out the stories and drag him into the plot until I can see that his mind has finally allowed him to journey outside his cell and into the light of a compelling story. Sometimes I see Scott and Rachel listening in, too.

He tells me about playing football. He spends hours explaining the rules of the game and lays out torn pieces of leaves on his bed to teach me the different positions and what each one is supposed to do. He shows me plays that won him games. He pretends he’s a coach and gives me life lessons. He chews the quarterback to see if his plant might be edible and spits it out. It tastes bitter. I laugh at him and he sends it sailing down the stream to me, as a joke. I rescue it from the water and lay it on the stone floor to dry.

Later, I tuck the dry leaf under my pillow as I drift off to sleep. The leaf has been between his lips, those soft, puffy, heart-shaped lips that I watch for hours every day, and it’s the closest thing I have to being able to kiss him myself.

I feel guilty about our work to help Homer see into the experiment and the fact that it helps me pass the time when he’s gone. The effort to inhale the gas out of his cell almost always knocks me out, and by the time I come around, it’s almost time for him to wake up, too. It means I get double the gas, and I rarely have to feel like I’m alone.

It’s different for him when I get the gas. He has to wait and suffer through it. Whether he’s in the experiment or waiting for me to return from it, Homer is awake, alone and scared, far more than I am. I don’t know how he does it. I wish I could do it for him.

He’s usually waiting for me when I wake up from the gas. Watching me. I never know how long he’s been there.

One time, I wake up to find that it’s dark, freezing cold, and probably the middle of the night. The passage of the seasons isn’t completely lost on us. Far beneath the ground, the heat and cold seep down into the rock and earth around us, and we can tell when it’s been cold outside. My chest feels tight on this night, most likely from whatever death I experienced while I was out of it. I remember nothing.

His eyes are inches away from mine, studying me in the dim light, glowing with concern, and they relax with relief when they register my presence. He has his hood pulled up around his head for warmth and is wrapped snugly in his blanket.

“You back?” he whispers, softly so that he won’t wake the others.

I nod before closing my eyes again. 

“I love you,” he says.

My eyes fly open.

“Just checking.”

“Wait, what?” I struggle to sit up. “Are you joking just now?”

“I wouldn’t joke like that,” he promises sincerely, peering at me from beneath his hood.

“But…” I’m at a loss for words. I don’t know what to say. His words still hang in the air between us.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a couple hours, I guess,” he says, his voice still a raspy whisper. “Lying here watching you, all peaceful and beautiful. Worrying about you. Thinking how much I miss you when you’re out like that. And I realized it’s true. And it’s probably been true for awhile.”

I settle back down, pulling my knees up. “Hell of a thing to wake up to, Homer.”

He grins, his mischievous grin this time, half his mouth crinkling ahead of the other, his eyes twinkling. “Well. Just wanted to be sure you were up.”

Despite how filthy and pale and exhausted he looks, I find him incredibly attractive right now, and it pisses me off. “ _God_ , you’re a jackass sometimes.”

“Yeah. The jackass meant it, though.”

I close my eyes again, letting this sink in. As much as he’s doing it to tease me and gently check my status, neither of which is that romantic a cause, it still touches something deep inside me. “In that case…”

“Stop.” I hear a rustling. “Whatever you’re about to say, I don’t want to hear it unless you’re serious. You don’t have to say anything. We can talk about something else.”

I open my eyes. He's pulled the hood in tighter around his face. “It’s okay,” I say. “I’ve been thinking about the same thing.”

“And? What did you decide?”

“Well,” I say carefully. “I guess I have a thing for jackasses.”

“Yeah? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Means I love you too, jackass.”

He smiles and touches his fingers to the glass without another word, reaching out from under his blanket, and I meet him there. He traces an H on the glass. I trace a P, then I trace over his H while he traces my P in turn. Deep inside, I feel a warm glow, sensing a happiness that I once believed I would never be able to experience down here, the pleasure that comes from connecting deeply with someone else’s soul.

It feels wrong somehow, but at the same time, I know that the pleasure I find in interacting with Homer like this is what sustains me and keeps me from sinking into irreversible darkness. There _is_ happiness, even in the depths of our despair. Homer is my light in the darkness.

“Were you ever in love with Mandy?”

He drops his hand. “What?”

“It’s okay. I’m just curious.”

“No.” He heaves a sigh and runs his finger back and forth on the glass absently. “That was a one time thing, I told you.”

“Yeah, but, why? You’ve never said why it didn’t work out.”

“Pretty simple, really,” he says, a smile curling at the corner of his mouth. “Mandy hooked up with me to see if she was gay like she thought.” He taps his knuckle against the glass. “Turned out she was. Good night for me, not so much for her.”

“Oh,” I say, my voice faint, even to my ears. "I didn't know."

“Neither did I. How about you?” he asks. “How many times were you in love?”

I lick my lips. “I don’t know,” I say. “I told you about Byron, but I don’t think I really loved him.”

“How’d you know?” 

“I guess… after awhile I realized I wanted to be alone when I was with him.”

“Do I ever get on your nerves?” His eyes look me over with expectation. “I won’t be offended, I promise.”

I shake my head. “I know I tease you sometimes, but no.” I sit back up, finally ready to be up for a bit. “I’m always happy to see you. How many times were you in love?”

“Twice, I think,” Homer admits. “Jenna, my high school junior year girlfriend, I was definitely in love with her. Head over heels. Gorgeous. Blonde. Older. She was a senior. Her little brother Jack was on the team with me. But she cheated on me with a college freshman.”

“Bummer,” I say, leaning forward. I’ve never heard him talk about this before.

“Didn’t leave my bedroom for three days. Mom and Dad almost sent me to a therapist. Finally they promised to take me to Six Flags if I’d just come out of my room. I forgot all about her on the Screamin’ Eagle and never looked back.”

“I didn’t know you were into roller coasters.”

“I absolutely hate roller coasters. That’s how I forgot. Then Kellie was my girlfriend freshman year of college. I think I loved her. I told her I did. But it didn’t work out. We just didn’t like doing the same things together.” He hesitates.

“If we ever get out of here,” I say carefully. “It might not work out between us, either. And that’s okay.”

“What? Why the fuck would you say that?” he demands, lowering his voice and leaning closer to me. We’re so close to each other that it’s almost like the glass isn’t there, even though his voice is a little more far away than I would like. The world has become the small, warm pocket of space between me and him, and an inch or so of solid plexi-glass keeping us from touching.

“Because. Out there, you and I would have never met. This would never be a thing.”

“Why not?”

“Are you joking?” I ask. “You, the handsome football player? Me, the crazy handicapped girl?”

“Handsome?” he asks. That charming half-smirk reappears on his face. “You think so?”

“Shut up,” I say, punching lightly at the glass. This thought has been in the back of my mind ever since the day I finally could see for myself just how attractive he was. The thought that we’re unmatched. “You have to know how good-looking you are.”

“No, but you can keep telling me if you want,” he offers.

“Not when you act like that.”

“Fine,” he says. “Well, you’re not such a bad catch yourself, you know.”

“I’m not. You don’t have to pretend like I am.”

“What the hell? Are you trying to fish for compliments?”

“I’m serious. I grew up as a kid with a disability, Homer. I was different. I was weird.”

“So?” he asks. He almost seems offended. “Why would you think I care about any of that?”

“So, I wouldn’t be anywhere in your orbit out there in the real world. You and I aren’t in the same league.”

“But I like you weird. Hasn’t anybody ever liked you for being weird before?”

The words instantly sober me, though he has no way of knowing why, because I’ve never told him this part. “Once.”

“Really? Tell me about it,” he says, still not realizing the sensitive ground he’s treading upon.

“Well,” I say, thinking carefully through my words. “He took me to his house, and then he locked me in his basement.”

“Oh,” Homer says faintly. I see the anxiety slipping back onto his face and it makes me sick.

“It wasn’t all bad,” I say. “I met a nice boy down there.” My mouth curls up in a small smile. “And he acted like I wasn’t crazy.”

He relaxes. “Okay. First of all,” he says, placing a finger back on the glass, “I don’t believe for a second that you’re crazy. You’re just more closely tuned to shit that other people don’t understand. I get that.” He shakes his head for emphasis and taps the glass again with two fingers this time. “Second thing, you’re not blind anymore, and I still liked you when you were, anyway. And last, if we’d met when we were, like, six, you would have been the Russian heiress and I would have been just some kid on a dirty farm in Missouri, so don’t tell me I’m the one out of your league. We aren’t in high school anymore, so you and me, we are in exactly the same boat today.”

I don’t know how to explain any of this to him. He doesn’t get it. He’s spent his life in the mainstream. I haven’t. “I’m not normal, Homer. I never will be. I don’t fit in out there. If we get out, why would you want someone like me?”

“You think _I’m_ going to be normal outside of here?” he asks in disbelief. “Like we’re going to walk out of here and I’m going to be swarmed with supermodels or something?”

“Well,” I say. “Weren’t you the golden boy before this?”

“Before,” he repeats. “If we ever get out of here, I’m going to be just as fucked up as you, princess. You know what we’re going to be if we get out of here? Fucking survivors.” He laughs, with only a slightly bitter tone, and I can’t help but join him. “Normal is going to be a bit out of my league now.” He smiles sadly as his finger trails down the glass to his mattress. “No one out there will ever understand what I’ve been through or how different I am because of it.”

“Except me,” I say, tapping the glass near where his finger is.

“Except you,” he agrees quietly, staring at his own finger.

“You say that now,” I continue. “But if we were out there, if you had beautiful women falling at your feet left and right, and all the freedom in the world…”

“I wouldn’t know what to do with them.” He traces circles on the glass around my finger. “I’d just want to be back with you as soon as possible.”

“What if Jenna wanted you?”

“Ha. No. She and I would have absolutely nothing in common now.”

“What if Mandy wanted to make it work?”

“Nah. I still have too much penis for that.”

“Homer!” I smack at the glass as he cracks up. I giggle too. His laughter is adorable and I can’t help myself. It’s rare that I get to see him this giddy. I think being in love suits him. It makes me happy to be able to give that to him.

“If Mandy was here right now, I bet I’d be fighting her for you,” he says, regaining a solemn face. “She was into blondes too.”

“I wouldn’t be interested.”

“Why not?” he presses.

“Because I need someone who understands me.”

“That’s not me, you know,” he says. His eyes crinkle in the corners with concern. “It may never be me. I don’t understand you, Prairie. I want to. But you operate at a higher frequency than I do.”

“Stop it,” I protest. “Homer, that is not true.”

“You worry that you’re not normal enough for me,” he explains. “But I worry that I’m not special enough for you.”

“You are, though.” I trace his H on the glass again. “You believe me. You try to understand. You look for the things I see that no one else does. And you try to see them with me.”

“And you’re just as much normal as I need,” he says. “Honestly? I wasn’t as mainstream as you think. I was a little weirdo when I was a kid. I could barely even talk without a stutter til fifth grade. I fit in even less after my NDE, but I covered by being good enough at sports, so they all had to put up with me.”

I start to laugh. “And you got a lesbian pregnant.”

“I didn’t know!” he protests before shushing me. “You’ll wake up Scott.”

“That’s why you never worried about your kid having another dad,” I say with realization.

“My kid probably has two moms by now,” he agrees.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

“No. We could all be one big weird dysfunctional family. As long as you don’t go cheating on me with Mandy.”

“I could never,” I say.

We both fall silent, staring into each others’ eyes. I know that both of us are wishing the cool, wet glass would fall away so that our fingers could explore each other’s flesh. Homer’s emotions are so strong right now that I can’t help but feel them for both of us. There’s a sharp hunger in his soul, a yearning that’s reaching out to me without words. It’s straining to tell me something he doesn’t have a way to articulate.

He’s right. We’re connected to each other in a way we’ll never be able to explain to anyone else, let alone each other.

Homer wraps his blanket around himself, leaving it open to me, and I do the same in reverse. It’s as though we’re cocooned together, blocking out the world except for each other. As intimate as we can be without touch.

“So you shared your deepest anxiety with me,” he says carefully. “Is it okay if I share mine with you now?”

“Oh,” I say faintly. “That’s not what you just did?”

“No.” He stares at me. I’m still getting acclimated to eye contact. There’s a deep intensity that comes with staring into Homer’s soul, being locked in the presence of his existence, and it captivates me. “Look.” He licks his lips nervously. “I’ve never asked you what happened. When you went with him.” He glances away. “Awake, I mean.”

I've already sucked in a breath before he finishes the unspoken question. " _That's_ your deepest anxiety?"

"When it comes to you?” he asks. “Yeah.”

“He hasn’t taken me awake in ages. Not since… well, you know.”

“I know. But still. I always told myself I didn't want to know what he did to you. I thought, well, I can’t change anything, so why waste energy worrying about it? But it's not fair for me to bury my head in the sand anymore about what you’ve been through."

I can feel my heart rate increasing, and I try to quell it. "You do have a choice. You don't have to know."

"I made it. Look, this won’t change anything between you and me.” His chin tightens. “Just me and him."

The determination on his face frightens me for some reason. "Maybe I don't want to change that. Maybe I don't want to talk about it." 

"Okay," he says slowly. "But I'm here, when you're ready. Got it?” He fixes me with a stern yet loving look. “No matter what he does to you, or what happens to you when I’m not there. I'll take care of you, as much as I can. And when I can’t, I still want to listen when you’re ready. Because someone still cares about you here. And I always will."

Tears are falling from my eyes now, I'm blinking furiously, and he can see it, even in the darkness.

"Hey," he says, putting his fingers on the glass, as if he's trying to reach to wipe the tears away.

It’s so cold tonight. I pull the blanket more tightly around me to guard against the chill. "I don't want to tell you," is all I manage to say. "Because that makes it real."

"You've told me enough," he says softly. His fingers are still stroking the glass near my face. "What you and I have is real, too."

“It’s more real. But what if he wasn’t always… making me?” I ask in a whisper. “You’d think less-“

“No,” he says, his voice a little louder. “No,” he whispers again, catching himself. “I can’t judge you. I would never.” He bites his lip as he looks at me, and I nearly melt. “The only thing that matters is you and me, and whether you mean what you said.”

“I do,” I whisper quickly. Now, more than ever. “Please. Don’t ever doubt that.”

“Then that’s all that matters,” he says firmly. “I know everything I need to know.” He rubs the glass again. “Someday, maybe he won’t have any power over you or me. Maybe we’ll be free to be together the way we want. That’s what I’m living for. I’ll do anything to get there. I'll die for it, too. You know that.”

I bury my hands in my sleeves, furiously trying to wipe the tears away. I don’t feel like I deserve Homer, but I want him so badly. Like I’ve never wanted anything in my life. And yet he’s so close while being so far away. The man who is literally fighting to conquer death in order to save us. I’ve never known anyone like Homer. I’ve never had anyone in my life who completes me the way he does.

“You don’t realize how beautiful you are,” he whispers. “I wish you could see yourself.”

I spent my life only able to know what people looked like by feeling them. Now that I can finally see, I’m with a man I can’t touch.

My life is full of irony.

And yet, though I haven’t seen much in my life, I know what I’m looking at when I gaze into Homer’s caring green eyes and let myself go.

“I do,” I say. “I see myself when I look at you.”

His hand travels the glass along the contour of my side. I feel an involuntary shiver. His lips part slightly, his eyes heavy with desire.

We all tiptoe around certain rules of decorum and privacy here. No one else watches when you do your business in the stream. It would be rude. Similarly, we don’t touch ourselves, except in the dark, under the covers, after the lights go out, when we can at least pretend like we’re alone.

That night, as we pleasure ourselves while staring into each others’ eyes through the streaked glass for the first time, I feel strong electric jolts that I’ve never felt before. Our souls strain to reach each other as we ride the waves of ecstasy.

When we’re both finished, my body still rippling with happiness, he smiles sadly and puts his fingers to the glass. I meet him there.

I trust him wholly and completely in my soul, in a way I’ve never trusted anyone else, and I feel the most powerful bond of intimacy with him, despite the fact that we can’t actually be intimate at all.

“Weirdo,” he whispers to me with a smile.

“Jackass,” I whisper back affectionately.

I feel safe as I fall back into sleep. Even though I know I’m not, he makes it easy to pretend, and that’s why I love him.

I know that much is real.


End file.
